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The updates on the post show that Apple 'rethought' this. But you see the problem. And it's a bigger problem that this is reported on Slate which is of course highly affiliated with Microsoft. And I'm not entirely sure what reporting this all on a Google blog makes the waters any less murky.

Apple rethought its policy and, to the spokeswoman's credit, she used the word "mistake." But this issue is similar to the Amazon-Macmillan e-book pricing dispute. The issue is very much less which side is right, and very much more the danger of too much concentration of power in too few hands.

This problem is not confined to high-tech companies, of course, though the problem is worse there because of the abjectness with which the public and media prostrate themselves at those companies' feet. Even on old-fashioned retailing, Hard Casr Crime had to clean up this cover because one big retailer -- Wal-Mart -- said that "We don't like dirty feet or butt cleavage," according to Hard Case's Charles Ardai.

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This blog is a proud winner of the 2009 Spinetingler Award for special services to the industry and its blogkeeper a proud former guest on Wisconsin Public Radio's Here on Earth. In civilian life I'm a copy editor in Philadelphia. When not reading crime fiction, I like to read history. When doing neither, I like to travel. When doing none of the above, I like listening to music or playing it, the latter rarely and badly.
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